Economic Perspectives

Steve Scranton

SVP, Chief Investment Officer and Economist

Perspectives

The "She-covery" Keeps on Rolling

Please note:

There will be no Economic Perspectives for two weeks. I will be on medical leave recovering from “minor” eye surgery. Economic Perspectives will resume December 1st. Although a bit early, have an enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday. 

Perspectives

One of the data points that stood out to me from last week's employment report was the data on women employees. In October women filled 80% of the jobs created. I thought this would be a good time to revisit a topic I have written on in the past — women in the workforce. As I said in my previous discussion of this topic, if the pandemic recession was a “she-cession”, the recovery has been a "she-covery".

Today's newsletter will be graph heavy. Don't worry, you will have two weeks to recover from the graph overload!

The data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as of 10/31/23. I am examining the following:

• Total nonfarm jobs
• Private Goods Producing jobs
• Construction
• Manufacturing
• Mining & Logging
• Private Service Providing jobs
• Financial Activities
• Information
• Leisure & Hospitality
• Other Services
• Private Education and Health Services
• Professional and Business Services
• Retail Trade
• Transportation and Warehousing
• Utilities
• Wholesale Trade
• Government

In order to give an equal comparison, I am once again using the method to index the growth from a common starting point. For today, I am examining the trend over the past ten years. As a result, the common starting point is 10/31/13.

Let us start with examining the trend for women versus all employees for total nonfarm jobs. As you can see from the graph and table below, the growth rate for women is slightly faster than total jobs growth. For perspective on the trend, here is the ratio of women versus total employees over the past 10 years.

Now, let us turn to examining the broad Goods Producing sector. The graph and table both illustrate that women make up a larger percent of the work force in the Goods Producing industry sectors now compared to ten years ago. Even with that improvement, women's overall share of the Goods Producing jobs is still below 25%.

Let us now drill down into the three industry sectors that comprise the broad Goods Producing sector. I will start with the Construction industry sector. As you can see, something has changed since the pandemic crisis as the trend growth rate of women in the construction industry has accelerated compared to growth of total Construction industry jobs. Perhaps the message is getting out that construction is a perfectly acceptable career field for women. This is still a male dominated industry as women still make up small percent of Construction jobs. 

The trend in the Manufacturing sector was already underway before the pandemic shutdown. Once restrictions were lifted, the growth trend has continued. Not to sound like a broken record but, even with the faster growth, women still make up less than a 30% of the overall Manufacturing workforce.

Mining and Logging is very a small industry and still very much male dominated. Since 2017, the growth trend for women has mostly remained below the trend for overall Mining and Logging jobs. The trend has improved slightly from 2018 but is still below 2013 levels.

The percent of women filling Service Providing jobs has remained pretty stable. Women still occupy the majority of the jobs in the broad Service Providing sector.

There is a clear shift towards women making up less of the Financial Activities workforce going back to 2013. The trend has accelerated as women make up even less of the Financial Activities workforce now. The reality check is that women still fill the majority of the jobs, just not as big of a majority compared to ten years ago.

The growth trend for women in Information has consistently been slower than total jobs growth in the Information sector until recently. As of 10/31/23 women now make up a slightly larger percent of jobs in the Information sector compared to 2013.

The growth trend in the Leisure and Hospitality sector has barely changed. There is clearly a seasonal pattern at play with the women's data, but the data shows that women still make up the majority of the workforce in the Leisure & Hospitality sector.

The Other Services category is a bit of a catch-all. It includes repairs, religious activities, grantmaking, advocacy, laundry, personal care, death care and personal services. The growth trend for women was starting to outpace total jobs in 2019 and has resumed since the pandemic lockdown ended.

There has been virtually no change in the Private Education and Health Services industry sector. Women still massively dominate the jobs filled in this industry sector.

Women are a growing force in the Professional and Business Services industry sector. As you can see from the graph and table, the trend growth for women is rising faster than for the industry as a whole. Women are slowly approaching an equal balance with men in this industry sector.

Perhaps much of the move towards the Goods Producing industry sector jobs is coming from the Retail Trade industry sector. Women held a slight majority of Retail  Trade jobs in 2013 and now men are the majority.

The positive growth trend in the Transportation and Warehousing sector that started before the pandemic lockdown has resumed and accelerated. Maybe women have grown tired of the volatility in hours for a retail job and moved to driving transportation vehicles or working in warehouses. This may be especially true if the woman is the bread winner in a household and needs more dependable hours and higher wages.

Although not in the Goods Producing side of the economy, the Utilities industry has traditionally been a male dominated industry. As the table shows, it remains a male dominated industry but, women have made inroads since the pandemic lockdown.

Wholesale Trade is another industry where the trend growth rate for women has accelerated away from the growth rate of all employees in Wholesale Trade.

The percentage of women occupying Government jobs has been steadily growing since 2013. It is difficult to know what type of jobs since the BLS lumps all government jobs into one broad industry sector.

Closing Thoughts

• Just examining the “big picture” (i.e., total nonfarm payroll) provides a couple insights regarding women versus total jobs growth.
• Men still hold the majority of total jobs (51.1%) but, women have almost closed that gap completely (49.9%).
• Traditional male dominated industries continue to have men dominate those industries, just not as much as before.
• Of the three broad industry sectors, Government has seen the biggest increase of women in the industries compared to men since 2013. 
• Government:1.2 percentage point increase
• Private Goods Producing: 1.1 percentage point increase
• Private Service Providing: 0.2 percentage point increase.
• Two Private Service Providing industry sectors saw a decrease in the percent of jobs held by women.
• Retail Trade: -2.1 percentage point decrease
• Financial Activities: -1.7 percentage point decrease
• Four of the traditional male dominated industries saw a shift with more women taking on new jobs created.
• This is important since the average Goods Producing job pays $71,422 per year compared to $58,491 for Service Providing jobs. The BLS does not publish wages for the Government sector.
• For many women, this can be a life changing event. 
• There is an acronym used to describe working people that are struggling to make ends meet: ALICE =Assets Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. There are many single moms who fit into that category.
• The extreme example would be a woman working in the Leisure & Hospitality industry whose average monthly wage is $28,232 and is able to re-train to work in the Utilities industry whose average monthly pay is $108,832. 
• There has been anecdotal evidence that some traditional male dominated industries, with ongoing labor shortages, are making a concerted effort to attract women to fill job openings.
• Some are conducting education fairs at schools to educate females about the opportunities in their industry.
• Some are working with states to offer retraining programs to attract and train women.
• Others are either providing in-house daycare or paying for daycare expenses to attract women.
• There are 6,010,000 more women than men age 16 years and over, while there are 3,047,000 more job openings than unemployed people. 
• The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program was developed to attract more women into these industries to address labor shortages.
• Perhaps similar efforts will begin for other industries that have chronic labor shortages.

Economic Data

Consumer Debt

• Consumers continued to spend by taking on more debt. According to the New York Federal Reserve data, total household debt rose to a record high of $17.29 trillion in the 3rd quarter. Mortgage debt now stands at $12.14 trillion, student loan debt at $1.6 trillion, auto debt at $1.6 trillion and credit card debt at $1.08 trillion.

Consumer Sentiment

• Consumer sentiment fell for the fourth consecutive month based on the results of the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment index. The index dropped from 63.8 in October to 60.4 in the preliminary November results. 
• The Current Conditions sub-index fell from 70.6 to 65.7.
• The Future Expectations sub-index fell from 59.3 to 56.9.

Employment

• The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index fell from 114.63 in September to 114.16 in September.
• The Department of Labor released the latest data on unemployment claims. The results showed that the number of people filing for initial claims fell by 3,000 from 220,000 to 217,000. That is a bit misleading since the Department of Labor revised the previous weeks number up from 217,000 to 220,000. The net result of the two weeks is no change. Unfortunately, once someone is laid off, it is getting hard for them to find a new job. This can be seen in the fact that continuing claims rose for the 7th consecutive week. Total continuing claims rose from 1,812,000 to 1,834,000.

Housing

• The decline in mortgage applications broke its three-week streak as mortgage applications rose 2.5% last week. Applications to buy a house rose 3.0% while applications to refinance rose 2%. The mortgage market was clearly helped by the large drop in US Treasury yields last week. This carried through to mortgage rates as well. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported a decline in the 30-year mortgage rate. The rate declined from 7.86% to 7.61%.

Trade Deficit

• The Census Bureau reported a widening of the trade deficit in September. The deficit widened from $58.7 billion to $61.5 billion as imports grew faster than exports. A widening trade deficit reduces GDP growth so, all else being equal, 3rd quarter GDP will be revised lower due to the wider trade deficit.